How-to
myWPI Accessibility Series: Color and Contrast
How often do you think about the use of color in your myWPI course site content? Selecting colors with accessibility in mind will not only improve the experience for users with vision deficiencies like color blindness, but for all students using your course site. In today’s post, we’ll discuss a few ways you can modify […]
myWPI Accessibility Series: Providing Semantic Structure to your Documents
The myWPI platform is accessible to all users by default; however, the individual content items uploaded by faculty and students may not be. How can the common documents we use day to day be made accessible for users with visual impairments or learning and cognitive disabilities? You’ll be happy to hear that there are just a few […]
Create Competition with Clickers
Did you know that you can divide your class and form teams with clickers during your PowerPoint lecture? You can! Adding in teams, who will be competing through out the lecture, will add a heightened focus as our inner need to compete is strong. If you are already familiar with creating PowerPoint clicker questions – […]
Check out these 3 great features of PDF Annotator!
On the classroom podiums you will find 2 programs that will allow you to mark up PDFs as well as Powerpoint presentations and other files – Smart Notebook and PDF Annotator. Alright! So lets start with why I’m focusing on PDF Annotator and not Smart Notebook. At some point in the near future WPI will […]
Compatibility Mode and myWPI
If you’re an Internet Explorer 11 user, you may have noticed that myWPI has the occasional tendency to look, well, odd. If you’re seeing errors like these scrollbars, or perhaps encountering other errors in Internet Explorer where things aren’t displaying or working correctly, you may need to turn off Compatibility Mode! Compatibility mode is a […]
Conducting an Online Survey? Qualtrics is the tool for you.
What is it? Qualtrics’ Research Suite is an online survey software solution for WPI Students, Faculty, and Staff that allows users to collect, analyze and act on relevant data. Who is eligible to create surveys? All WPI Community Members with an @wpi.edu email address! How do I get there? https://wpi.qualtrics.com Where can I learn more? […]
WPI is making the switch to a new web conferencing tool!
Since 2008, WPI has been supporting Wimba Classroom for its campus web conferencing needs. However, a couple years ago, Blackboard, which powers our myWPI system, acquired Wimba and also another web conferencing tool used in higher education, Elluminate. As part of the acquisition, Blackboard is phasing out Wimba (and Elluminate) and has rolled out a new […]
Rubrics and Blackboard
ru·bric noun \ˈrü-brik, -ˌbrik\ 4: a guide listing specific criteria for grading or scoring academic papers, projects, or tests (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rubric) I know, you are thinking ‘again?’ We have had several discussions on Rubrics over the past few years, but I wanted to revisit this idea and include some exciting information on rubrics and myWPI! So lets start from […]
Blackboard 9.1 Feature Spotlight: Spaces
You’ve set up your profile in the brand-new release of Blackboard. Great! Now, what are you going to do with it? One option is to set up a “Space”, which is essentially a tiny social organization with very basic features. Anyone can create a space if they have a Blackboard account—it doesn’t matter if you’re […]
Hammering home your (power)Point – Presenting Part II
In my last post, I shared some ideas from EDUCAUSE’s Malcolm Brown on presenting. I ran out of time and space before I had a chance to finish! Here are some more of my thoughts on his tips. Idea 15: Who do you think you’re talking to?!? Though it is impossible to address your entire […]
